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Significant Scots
Edgar Allan Poe


Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), was of Scottish descent. His great-grandfather, John Poe, came from Ireland to Pennsylvania about 1745. John’s son, David Poe, fought in the Revolution and War of 1812. Edgar Allan Poe’s father in 1805 married Elizabeth Arnold. Both were actors, and their son, an orphan at an early age, was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy tobacco manufacturer of Richmond, Virginia, who had him educated in England and at the University of Virginia.

“Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), was of Scottish descent. His great-grandfather, John Poe, came from Ireland to Pennsylvania about 1745. John’s son, David Poe, fought in the Revolution and War of 1812. Edgar Allan Poe’s father in 1805 married Elizabeth Arnold. Both were actors, and their son, an orphan at an early age, was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy tobacco manufacturer of Richmond, Virginia, who had him educated in England and at the University of Virginia.”

The forgoing are the well known, correct facts of Edgar Allan Poe. Nevertheless, Poe’s genealogy and racial heritage have been ascribed foremost to his English mother from London, Elizabeth, as well as to Poe connections in Ireland.

Nevertheless, it is largely unknown by Americans that the Scottish immigrants to Ireland were settled in Ulster, Northern Ireland, by William of Orange. They are well known by Scots as Ulster-Scots. The distinction of an Ulster-Scot and the Irish connection proved crucial to an understanding of the error of scholars who did not know this cultural difference between Presbyterians and Irish Roman Catholics.

No one has ever conducted any serious research of the Poes of Scotland. The American Military Academy of West Point in New York has in its “vertical file” of Cadets, the most published Family Tree of Edgar Allan Poe, and it is incorrect.

However, the statement, “His great-grandfather, John Poe, came from Ireland to Pennsylvania about 1745,” is misleading. No questions are asked or answered in available biographies regarding where John Poe was before Ireland? He was in Fenwick, Ayrshire, Scotland. And the unraveling of accepted “facts” of Poe’s heritage continue in 880 pages of new data about Poe’s Scottish Connections. In 1997, when we first visited Ayrshire, we passed by this quaint hamlet of Fenwick, not knowing that Poe’s ancestors had once lived here. The author has labored for 20 years on his research and writing of Edgar Allan Poe, now set to be available in 2016.

Here is Chapter 5 from the forthcoming book about Edgar Allan Poe sent in by the author for which many thanks

Also an old and now lost web site on him can be found in the archives at:
http://www.poeinscotland.com/index.html


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